Posted on 04/07/2005 4:47:51 AM PDT by kjvail
Ever since 9/11, the president of the United States has been urging the use of American power to spread the allegedly universal principles of “freedom and democracy” throughout the world. On his recent European tour President Bush solicited the support of Europe in this cause, saying, “our ideals and our interests lead in the same direction.”
What that direction is had been tellingly indicated just a few days earlier by Condoleezza Rice. Speaking in Paris, she said that the founders of the American and French republics were inspired by the same values, a statement that implied common origins in the same revolutionary spirit. Though historically wholly erroneous, this view was consistent with the ideology that the administration has enunciated. It should by now be obvious that, in his foreign policy views at minimum, the president of the United States is no conservative. He is a Jacobin nationalist.
Inspired, guided, and supported by the ubiquitous neoconservatives, President Bush has adopted and fostered an ideologically charged missionary spirit that bears a striking resemblance to that of the Jacobins who led the French Revolution. The principles of “freedom and democracy” are to be promoted around the world by virtuous American power. The French Jacobins, too, saw themselves as virtuous champions of universal principles, “freedom” and popular rule prominent among them.
After the president’s inaugural address, his ensuing news conference, and his State of the Union address, no doubt can remain about how he views America’s role in the world. To advance freedom and democracy is, he said, “the mission that created our nation.” At the news conference he added, “I look forward to leading the world in that direction.” In the State of the Union speech he pointed to “the road of Providence” and said, “we know where it leads: it leads to freedom.”
The neoconservatives have transformed the old American exceptionalism, which counseled isolation from the world, into an assertive, ideologically intense nationalism, whose smugness seems to know no bounds. The president has long asserted that America’s values are for all people. “There is a value system that cannot be compromised, and that is the values we praise. And if the values are good enough for our people, they ought to be good enough for others.” In the State of the Union address he claimed, “we live in the country where the biggest dreams are born.” He and America are called to enact the will of Providence.
That a particular leader or country could be identified with God’s purpose is a notion alien to the mainstream of the Christian tradition, which insists that humans are fallen beings. Their knowledge is, at best, imperfect. Though statesmen, like others, should try to make room for the spirit of God by trying to purge themselves of tainted motives, not even a person of pure motive could in the infinitely complex reality of politics claim to have discerned God’s will for the world. None of this has deterred the president, who exhibits just the kind of pride against which the older western tradition—both classical and Christian—warned.
“Freedom” and “democracy” can mean radically different things. The president, his secretary of state, and their neoconservative idea-men have connected them with the Jacobin faith. The French Jacobins were followers of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who argued, “man was born free, but he is everywhere in chains.” For men to be liberated, inherited societies and beliefs had to be destroyed.
The French Revolution was an attempt to enact his ideas. The Jacobins dealt harshly with “evil,” guillotining conspicuous representatives of the old order and employing a general ruthlessness that culminated in the Terror. To France was assigned the mission of liberation. Europe and other parts of the world were thrust into protracted war.
In 1980, James Billington, the Librarian of Congress, used the phrase “fire in the minds of men” as the title for a book about the revolutionary faith. This faith would unsettle the entire Western world and eventually spawn the Communist Revolution of 1917. In his second inaugural address, the president used the same phrase, “fire in the minds of men,” not to reject this impulse, which is what would be expected from a conservative, but to help define America’s pursuit of freedom. He could not more clearly have aligned himself with Jacobinism. One wonders whether the president or his speechwriters understand that, rhetorically at least, he has adopted a faith that created some of history’s most monstrous regimes.
Today communism has collapsed, but another universalist ideology, the new Jacobinism, has taken its place. A difference between the French and the new Jacobinism is that the latter has chosen not France but America as mankind’s savior.
In a large number of speeches and statements since 9/11, the president has made clear that he considers armed world hegemony necessary to America’s mission. At the inauguration, the massive security—involving some 30,000 secret service agents, police, and military personnel—and other telltale symbolism signaled the invincibility and willpower of the United States. Here was installed an American emperor, but one far more powerful and far more ambitious than any Roman counterpart. Neo-Jacobin ideology can be seen as the perfect justification for American imperial power.
Praising the president’s inaugural address, neoconservative foreign-policy analyst Robert Kagan wrote in the Washington Post that America should pursue timeless “universal aspirations.” Fighting terrorism was “too narrow, too limited” as a “paradigm for American foreign policy.”
After the implosion of the Soviet Union, the neo-Jacobin neoconservatives argued that America should use its status as the lone superpower to spread its principles. They demanded “moral clarity” in U.S. foreign policy. Good stood against evil. After 9/11, Bush became their chief spokesman. He committed the United States to what he calls “the global democratic revolution.” The war against Iraq, he said, was “the first step” in that revolution. There has been not even a hint in the president’s recent speeches that the Iraqi debacle and the tens of thousands of dead and maimed have made him question his own virtuous nationalism.
Rarely has an ideology been so strongly entrenched in a country’s opinion-molding establishment. Especially with regard to foreign policy, the new Jacobinism is strongly represented in virtually all leading American media outlets. In the press, this is particularly true of the Wall Street Journal, but the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, Time and U.S. News and World Report all give it more than a hearing. Among the opinion magazines, the Weekly Standard is its main voice, but on foreign-policy issues at least, it also dominates formerly more conservative magazines like National Review.
In the commentariat, neo-Jacobin thinking is today challenging an older, more diffuse and less vigorous liberalism for pre-eminence. It is omnipresent in the think tanks, especially those emphasizing foreign policy and national security. Its brain-center is the American Enterprise Institute. On television, the Rupert Murdoch-owned Fox News Channel pushes the neoconservative foreign-policy line most conspicuously and reliably, but it flourishes on all the networks and major cable channels. By presenting itself on the radio waves and elsewhere as a form of kick-butt Americanism, neo-Jacobinism has also acquired millions of foot soldiers among flag-waving Americans.
What goes curiously unnoticed is that, despite their label, the neoconservatives think of themselves as representing a progressive, revolutionary force. The America they champion is not the America of history with its deep roots in a European and English past. In theory, they have constructed their own America, which represents a radical break with history.
“To celebrate America is ... to celebrate revolution,” writes professor Harry Jaffa, a leading disciple of Leo Strauss, whose admirers are spread throughout the Bush administration. The American Revolution in behalf of freedom may appear mild “as compared with subsequent revolutions in France, Russia, China, Cuba, or elsewhere,” Jaffa notes, but “it nonetheless embodied the greatest attempt at innovation that human history has recorded.”
Another leading neoconservative, Michael Ledeen, who first came into view as an advisor on national security in the Reagan White House, openly portrays the America with which he identifies as a destroyer of existing societies. According to Ledeen, “Creative destruction is our middle name, both within our society and abroad. We tear down the old order every day. ... Our enemies have always hated this whirlwind of energy and creativity, which menaces their traditions. ... [We] must destroy them to advance our historic mission.”
Some of the most prominent neoconservatives caught the revolutionary spirit when they were still Marxists, and despite their “second thoughts” they still harbor a deep desire for remaking the world according to a single model, their model. One of the reasons they are now fond of capitalism is that, like Marx, they conceive of it as an effective destroyer of traditional elites and societies.
According to Irving Kristol, the reputed godfather of neoconservatism, today’s United States is “ideological, like the Soviet Union of yesteryear.” His son William insists that for America vigorously to promote its universal principles abroad, it must have great military and other governmental might. The old conservative suspicion of strong, centralized federal government must be abandoned. According to the elder Kristol, it has been the role of neoconservatism “to convert the Republican party, and conservatism in general, against their wills,” to this new conception of government.
To call people who are attracted to the new Jacobinism “neoconservatives” reveals profound confusion. Modern conservatism was born in opposition to Jacobin universalism. The father of conservatism, Edmund Burke, was an English liberal, a Whig, who was very friendly to the American colonists; he thought they had strong traditional grounds for challenging king and Parliament. What Burke argued passionately against, by contrast, was the French Revolution and Jacobin thinking, which he saw as expressing an unhistorical, tyrannical spirit and an importunate desire for power. Burke warned specifically against “liberty” in the abstract.
Like Burke, the Framers of the U.S. Constitution associated liberty with particular inherited traditions, limited, decentralized government, checks on power, self-restraint, moderation, and a willingness to compromise. Jacobin “freedom,” by contrast, justifies unchecked imperial power.
That is the “freedom” for which George W. Bush has become the most prominent advocate.
Get back to us when neo-Conservatives and President Bush start guillotining their political enemies, okay?
I disagree with most of this article - the Jacobins have far far more in common with the political left in today's America than with the political right.
From merriam-Webster online; see #2:
One entry found for Jacobin.
Main Entry: Jac·o·bin Pronunciation: 'ja-k&-b&n Function: noun Etymology: Middle English, from Middle French, from Medieval Latin Jacobinus, from Late Latin Jacobus (Saint James); from the location of the first Dominican convent in the street of Saint James, Paris 1 : DOMINICAN 2 [French, from Jacobin Dominican; from the group's founding in the Dominican convent in Paris] : a member of an extremist or radical political group; especially : a member of such a group advocating egalitarian democracy and engaging in terrorist activities during the French Revolution of 1789
President Bush is not denying God - as the Jacobins, being Rousseau acolytes did. President Bush is not having people who disagree with him sent to the guillotine, as the Jacobins (the Terror) did. If the label of Jacobins can be applied in today's world, it would fit the Nazi-Islamists to a tee.
The author above has de-constructed the falsehood that the Jacobins became, and attempts to graft this same hypocrisy onto President Bush.
Like any enlightenment-driven intellectual who has fallen sway to the fundamental flaw in all leftist philosophy and has forsaken God and replaced him with Man's auto-perfectability, and like those same Jacobins who later were personified by Napoleon's false revolution, the author has managed to convince himself these are one and the same. Nothing could be further from the truth.
Above example which puts proof to the adage, "when Man ceases to believe in God, he doesn't become someone who believes in nothing, but instead will believe anything"
Speaking in Paris, she said that the founders of the American and French republics were inspired by the same values, a statement that implied common origins in the same revolutionary spirit.
What???!!!
I must have missed the part where George Washington, John Adams, James Madison, and Alexander Hamilton began guillotining people indiscriminately and destroying churches. Whoever wrote the line in the speech should be spanked publicly.
The U.S. left its "national sovereignty" reservation only because other "sovereign" (albeit primitive and unenlightened) nations, for whatever reason left theirs to inflict wholesale damage to us for being successful.
I would not support foreign intervention for a second if the world's morons were content to keep their brutalities at home. Ideology is simply a means to try to civilize the scum of the earth by whatever means they are able to understand.
I think you have missed the point. The comparison is, one:
The former position of the Republican party vis a vis the current party's position on the strength of the central government,two: The President's expressed drive to remake other nation's political structures, a position that flys in the face of Republican party history.Three: The President's dismissive attitude toward American workers when he seeks to favor illegal immigrants over American workers via the presentation of legal status to illegals.
The President is more of a Wilson Democrat than a Reagan Republican.
The French simply took the next step into the insane world of the present day religion of peace. The only difference between the French and the ROP is that it didn't take the French 1000 years to figure out that that was a dead end.
You would have to elaborate.
With the hubris of an eastern, Brahmin child of privilege and the no-nothing bravado of a west Texas, self-imaged cowboy, Bush has grafted God's will onto an overarching vision of Messianic democracy. This radicalism has no basis in American history or tradition and is, in fact, in direct contradiction of the principles of our founding fathers.
Jacob Leib Talmon (1916-1980), esteemed Israeli historian presciently foresaw our present situation over 50 years ago.
Of course the problem is the Bush administration has nothing to do with the American Right either.
a member of such a group advocating egalitarian democracy and engaging in terrorist activities
I accept that definition without qualification. Who is it today promising to spread democracy around the world,equating democracy with freedom and promising consequences if his dictates are followed?
The U.S. left its "national sovereignty" reservation only because other "sovereign" (albeit primitive and unenlightened) nations, for whatever reason left theirs to inflict wholesale damage to us for being successful
Oh no! Not "primitive and unelightened"!! Do you hear yourself...?
I thought she was supposed to be the supremely educated thinker in this bunch.
Apparently she may have been dropped from the same mold as yesterday's popularly acclaimed, brilliant statesman from Arkansas.
Most US Christian's know that there are extreme forces a foot that would like to repeat the French Revolution across the planet in an attempt to virtually eliminate all reference to Christians.
These would include your communists, socialists and islamic extremists...."Jacobins" all.
Presently I do not see any Christians advocating a "Reign of Terror". I do however see a move to free the people of the world from terrorists and totalitarian law so that freedom of religion can flourish.. ..nothing new here.
If the real "Jacobins" want to apply their name to Bush, I am not surprised. Projection has always been one of their favorite political games.
FReepmail me to get on of off this list
President Bush understands freedom. President Bush values life.
President Bush understands politics. President Bush values power.
Yuh pays your money taxes and yuh takes your choice.
Let's go through this one more time...after which I'll be thoroughly bored of you Patsies.
September 11th was a watershed in the life of Western Civilisation: it proved that it did not require armies, or even guns, for people with an agenda, to attack and inflict damage on major cities.
Let us ask, what is the most threatening agenda at this point to Western Civilisation? It is that of the radical Islamists, which is particularly dangerous since their adherents show little reluctance in dying for their cause.
Can the terrorists be wiped out? Particular groups can be wiped out, countries which sponsor them can be attacked, but the underlying ideas and causes of these terrorists to spring up will make them a continuing threat.
How is this threat scotched then? The answer is to attack the ideas - by presenting an alternative of Western democratic ideals, and breathing them to life in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, where we had to wipe out dangerous regimes anyway. In the long run, the Islamist ideas will proven to be a dead end, literally. It will become clear that the USA and West were not the source of Islam's problems, rather it was the kleptocrats that kept telling them that the USA and West were the source of their problems. We are seeing this in action in Iraq and Afghanistan. This subtle strategy is at work elsewhere.
Thus this entire operation, which it has altruistic ends, has the most practical of motives - trying to prevent war from being waged, rather than picking up the pieces after terrorists attack.
I know you Patsies won't believe in this because you're all too busy indulging in xenophobia, but this happens to be the case.
Ivan
with the exception of your third point, on which I concur, i disagree. The author is contemptuous of the President, of our foreign policy, ergo of the National Interest and National Defense needs of the current day.
His use of historical themes is shallow - Jacobins were not champions of liberty and freedom save only in their own minds - and to mangle this fact so that he may impugne our efforts to get at the root of the problem in the arab world is the height of sophistry.
And true, traditional Republican values emphasize the kind of co-existence that dances on the edge of isolationism - said paradigm went down in the dust and screams of two towers on the 11th of September.
To win this war, we need a september 12th approach, not a september 10th world-view - and if we all know that the enemies of our country are grown from the rot within an arab world dominated by tyranny, then I for one completely believe that planting the seed of self-determination among those peoples offers an excellent chance to not just defeat our those enemies, but seriously nullify the reasons they exist as well as the wellspring from which they draw their cannon-fodder from.
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